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crass solidarity
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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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okmatewanker
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Side note.
Back in 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour and a new Jaguar was about $6,000.00
If a minimum wage worker really wanted one, he could buy a supercar. $1.00 x 40 x 52 =2,080. Three years ot buy the car.
$15.00 x 40 x 52 = 31,000. Ten years work to buy that car.
Back in 1960 this story is in the UK and we were never paid in dollars.
If a minimum wage worker wanted a jaguar his mam would have clipped him round the ear and told him to get a grip.
Edit: there's some confusion that I've conflated minimum wage with teenagers... But here. In the North of England, we still have multigenerational houses in the working class... And more than that. If I act like a dafty, my Mam would still happily travel across town to clip me and I'm an old man.
That's a bit beside the point, innit? Whether the wealth inequality started high enough that it was unattainable then, it's surely a bigger gap now, right?
That's rather debatable.
The gap is different.
The idea of blowing a monthly subscription on a piece of technology (in the 60s this would have been something like a TV set from Radio rentals) Vs a mobile phone subscription today.
Most working class folk I know have a phone and that's because it is a social necessity (as well as a practical work necessity in many cases).
I was speaking to the notion of how working class folk did, and still do, value the notions of personal austerity and responsibility.
Like, one thing a working class lad done good would always seem to do is to pay off his folk's mortgage or help them retire. I'm pretty sure the kid in this example did too (at least I'd hope they maybe did). But to be driving a fancy car on an estate still comes across as showy, classless, and a certain target for people to want them to be put in their place.
I'm not condoning this, by the way.
Going back to whether the gap is bigger, we would have to find a constant metric to measure that gap with. Inflation is not enough, not are possessive markers. Quality of life, access to healthcare, life expectancy, they all give variable results, enough to say only that it is different.